Amid even the exciting bustle of military duty, the reflections of Waller were sometimes intolerable. He could never for a moment forget. Though he was not, as a matter-of-fact young English officer, prone to flights of romantic fancy, imagination would force upon him with poignant horror all that Mabel might be forced to endure at the hands of those on whose mercy she and her companions were cast by a fate that none could have foreseen, especially during the pleasant days of the year that was passed at Cabul, when the race-course, the band-stand, picnics, hunting-parties, morning drives, and rides to see Sinclair's boat upon the lake, tiffin parties at noon, others for whist or music in the evening, made up the round of European social life there, ere Mohammed Ackbar Khan came to the surface again with his deep-laid plots for aggrandisement and revenge. Mabel Trecarrel, his affianced wife, so gently soft and lady-like--her image was ever before him, her voice ever in his ear, and the varying expressions of her clear grey eyes, with all her winning ways, came keenly and vividly to memory, more especially in the lonely watches of the night, when muffled in his poshteen, with only a Chinsurrah cheroot to soothe his nerves and keep him warm, he trod from post to post visiting his sentinels, or listened for the sounds that might precede an Afghan assault, or perhaps an earthquake; for the troops had both to encounter, though often nothing came but the melancholy howl of the jackal on the night wind, as it sighed over the vast plain around the city of Jellalabad--the Zarang of the historians of Alexander. He had frequent thoughts of returning to Cabul in disguise as an Afghan. He had already been pretty successful in his Protean attempts to conceal his identity; but Sir Robert Sale would by no means accord him permission to risk his life again in a manner so perilous; so, as partial inactivity was maddening to him, after Ackbar Khan's defeat had left all the avenues from the city open, he volunteered, if furnished with a suitable escort, to ride to Candahar, and urge on General Nott the policy of instantly advancing. Sir Robert Sale agreed to this, and furnished him with a despatch and a guard of twenty Native Cavalry; so Bob Waller departed, actually in high spirits, thankful that even in this small way he was doing something that might ultimately lead to the recapture of Cabul, and, more than all, the rescue of her he loved.